Buying Points for Lifetime Rewards

Hi, I noticed we can buy 50,000 Rewards Points per year, at $12.50 per 1,000 points. I have two questions about that:

1) Is it possible to have these count towards Lifetime Rewards Points? I remember reading somewhere that transferring to a friend or relative and back again would have them count, but that seems like it wouldn't work, since why not just keep going back and forth indefinitely to rack up points?

2) Are there ever discounts on these Marriott points? If there are occasional sales, I'd rather wait for those than stock up at "full" price.

As for the transferring points back and forth, that won't work. The person who gets the points will have his/her lifetime points increased, but the person who transfers the points will have them deducted from his/her lifetime totals.

I don't recall ever seeing points being offered for a discounted price.

Thanks, bejacob. It appears I can get to the 750 nights in about four more years if nothing changes, but unless there are some super mega-bonuses during that time, my rough calculations say I will only be at about 1.8M-1.9M points at that time (including "average"/m historical mega bonus results); nice to know that buying points those last two years, if needed, can get me over that hurdle...

If you really want to buy points then I would recommend you buy SGP rather than Marriott. With almost the same price, you can buy 30,000 SGP points which would translate to 90,000 Marriott points. Not sure about them being counted into lifetime though.

But you point out another worthwhile issue - Starwood (unlike Marriott) does occasionally put Starpoints on sale and at a 35% discount, it can really start making sense (and some fortunate folks got 50% off the last offering).

I hadn't really ever thought about buying points, because as brightlybob notes it is rarely a good deal, but I do sometimes stay in Cat 1 and 2 properties that run more than $93.75 and $125 a night respectively. In those cases, it actually might make sense to buy points to cover the nights - saving some money while also hoarding the points for bigger ticket redemptions and getting closer to lifetime points. I'm going to have to think about that.

(Technically, if you want to think about this in depth, you probably need to consider the value of the points that would have been credited for a paid night instead of buying the points, and also account for any tax not paid due to the redemption.

You need to take the nightly rate before taxes/fees (A)

From a mock booking get the estimated taxes and fees (B)

Add (A) and (B) and this is your “cost” if paying for the room to the hotel (C)

Multiply (A) by your earning rate for points to calculate the points lost (D)

Lookup the number of points needed for the hotel category redemption (E)

Add (D) + (E) for the points that would equal the points you’d have if you paid the hotel directly (F)

Divide (F) by 1000, and multiply by the points purchase rate – this is your cost to buy the points needed for the room redemption and also buy the points you would have earned (G)

If (G) is less than (C), then it is cheaper to buy the points and redeem than it is to pay the hotel, while not impacting your point total.)

Nicely done, when I read the first paragraph my immediate thoughts were - aha, he's forgotten that spending money on Marriott points doesn't generate Marriott points which needs to be reflected in the value calculations!